Africa Map Project and a Barge at the Suez Canal

 

Beginning in the 1880s, greedy European countries invaded and conquered most of Africa -- all of it, except for Liberia and Ethiopia.  Why?  I always tell my history students the motivation is either God or greed.  In this case, it was the latter.  Previously, I had not done an activity for this chapter, so as I was thinking of what we could do, I thought we could visually and three-dimensionally mark all of the desired products on a map of Africa, so we did.  
   
I thought I'd wear an African shirt for this project day.  First of all, I researched the main exports from the 1880s for as many different countries as I could find, and then I bought or scavenged them.  I made stickers for a few of the more difficult ones (such as cows, olives, and uranium.)  Here is how we did the rest.

1.   I gave each student a card stock map of Africa and a piece of black card stock to glue it to after we were done.
2.  I projected a map of Africa onto the whiteboard and we wrote the name of almost every country on the maps.  I modeled this on the whiteboard so that they could easily follow along.
3.  I gave them time to color their maps.  I think that we all need a little time to color.  Besides it helping them to remember which country was where (they already had learned this as several countries were on the test), it is just good to use that creative, artsy side of our brains.  I believe it makes them better writers and better students.
4.  Next, we cut out the maps.  I passed out all the "stuff" while they were coloring and cutting.
5.  I wrote each country's commodity on the board inside the country so that they could follow along, and then they glued that item on the country.  
                

If anyone really cares (if you are still reading it would be interesting to know), here is a list of the countries, the commodity, and the item I researched and found to represent it.  I'd be happy to share the list, a copy of the map, and a pdf of my sticker page if anyone wants it.  Just ask.  

Morocco - wheat - wheat berries
Algeria - cattle - cow sticker (I printed out all of these)
Libya - raisins - a raisin (how creative!) 
Egypt - the Suez Canal - a barge sticker.  (I KNOW - the Suez Canal is  not a product, but it is partly why the French wanted control of Egypt so badly.  Here's a funny story.  As we were doing this part of the map, I said, "Algeria gets the cow sticker, Libya gets the raisin, and Egypt gets the barge."  After we had finished the whole map, the students wanted to know where the boat went.  I guess we never had barge as a vocabulary word?  That one surprised  me. ) 
Mauritania - iron - an iron nail
Mali - gold - gold paint (leftover from our illuminated letter Medieval project)
Niger - uranium - Uranium sticker
Chad - veggies - veggie sticker
Sudan - olives - olive sticker
Ethiopia - gold - paint
Senegal - fish - Swedish fish (I gave them four and let them eat two of them.) 
Ivory Coast - timber - little pieces of sticks
Ghana - coffee - coffee bean
Nigeria - oil - oil barrel sticker 
Gabon - timber - more sticks
Central African Republic of Congo/Congo/ Angola/Botswana - diamonds - clear plastic faceted beads  (and we discussed the legend of King Solomon's diamond mines in Congo)
Uganda - cobalt - a piece of broken blue glass (I was careful.) 
Somalia - tea - tea leaves
Tanzania - gold - more gold paint
Zambia - copper - a penny
Namibia - fish - the other Swedish fish
Zimbabwe - platinum - a piece of metal wire
Mozambique - aluminum - a piece of aluminum foil
South Africa - gold - still more gold paint 
Lesotho - coal - a piece of charcoal from my frozen fire pit (but we didn't all get that one as I forgot to tell them and then the bell rang.)

As usual, they  had about a week to finish them up.   The more diligent ones were coloring and gluing more carefully and I don't like to rush them.